


He had changed

by Ulrica



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:55:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulrica/pseuds/Ulrica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward Elric ponders about the evil nature of humans while looking at himself in the mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He had changed

He looks at himself in the mirror and wonders why, because this shouldn’t happen to him, it’s not something that happens to people like him. Because it’s just one of those ugly things that happen at night to innocent souls who are weak and vulnerable, it’s just one of those things you read at morning in the news paper, and then your coffee turns so bitter you just have to change the page so it goes away. But he can’t change the page, can’t he?

He can’t just read something else, discard the paper and focus on an alchemy book, as if that would make the horrible things that happen outside the window disappear; get lost in the sound of his children playing, and Winry's soft voice at night. 

And nothing will truly be okay, won’t it? Because there are knifes and guns everyday pointed at people, there are always going to be horrible, horrible monsters lurking out there, even if those monsters are human. 

But that just makes it worse, the fact that they are human, the fact that he is one of them, that they are all the same in some primal, old way. That pure evil is not owned by homunculi, that when he defeated father he wasn’t exactly saving the world, he was just making one of the many horrible things that inhabit it go away. Maybe evil is not anymore hiding away in the shadows underground, but it will always be walking alongside him in daylight.

But what makes humans so flawed? So utterly wrong and so utterly good in so many different ways, how can one person be simply good and the next person a thing out of nightmares? Edward may understand complicated alchemical theories, but he will never understand humans in their complexity; maybe that’s why human transmutation is impossible, it’s not really that we can’t bring souls back, but that we can’t understand them, that when we look in the mirror there’s so many questions and not a single answer. 

That’s how Edward feels, looking at himself in the mirror, so empty, so lost and yet there was nothing left in him to be found.  
And it’s funny, isn’t it? That so many horrible things happened to him but didn’t break him, and a simple human managed to do what a horde of monsters, homunculi, father and the truth couldn’t.

He always figured that it would feel so much worse, that the day he gave up and let all of the things that happened to him finally crack him open he would feel a indescribable pain inside, that nightmares and memories would haunt him everywhere, at any time. That he would just be a mess, something no one would be able to pick up and fix, not that anyone would want to.  
But no, it wasn’t like that. He just felt hollow; nothing inside of him but a feeling of pure loneliness and helplessness. Not even a shadow of his former self, but just an existence who took his form. It was much simpler, yet incredibly worse.

"¡Ed! What are you doing? You’ve been in there forever, I need to take a look at your automail, I can’t believe you got into a fight on the way home, seriously, you will never change."

"Sorry, Win, I’ll be out in a minute."

But he had changed, he had changed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/register/follow/ulricaikari)


End file.
